[BALUG-Talk] full raw archive (mbox) files publicly available, ...

[Michael Paoli]

Just so everyone is also aware, BALUG lists are publicly archived
(I believe that's always been the case, and is reasonably clear on
the lists' pages).

Also, on the new infrastructure, the
full raw archive (mbox) files are also available.
They can be found on the lists' archive pages,
the link on each labeled:
download the full raw archive

Note that the old archives aren't merged in yet, but expecting
to have that completed in the near future.

Also, planning to make those full raw archive mbox files
available via rsync - that will also be more handy/useful/efficient,
as some missing bits of the archives get filled in later
(don't presume the mbox files are append-only ... though they
will generally be append-mostly).  Over the years, there have
been multiple occasions where DreamHost.com lost some or all
of our archives (at least on some of our lists).  Still hoping
to later reinject and restore that, from other copies we have
or may be able to obtain.

That also means that anyone has the ability to backup the
entire raw mbox archive.  :-)  Making those raw mbox
archives public wasn't even an option with DreamHost.com
(at least through current version of MailMan, it's a global
option setting, and not per-list.  DreamHost.com hosted many
lists from many customers, so didn't reasonably have a way to
adjust that on a per-customer or per-list basis).

Two most important assets of list, are the archives, and the
members/roster - with those it's always possible to recreate
the list if needed/warranted.  Without those, not so easy
to infeasible.

> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu>
> To: BALUG-Test <balug-test@temp.balug.org>
> Subject: BALUG-Test: full raw mbox archive publicly available
> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:34:46 -0700

> And yes, the full raw mbox archive for BALUG-Test
> is publicly available:
> $ curl -I https://temp.balug.org/pipermail/balug-test.mbox/balug-test.mbox
> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:29:02 GMT
> Server: Apache/2.4.10 (Debian)
> Last-Modified: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:23:34 GMT
> ETag: "a046-5540b71d48512"
> Accept-Ranges: bytes
> Content-Length: 41030
> Content-Type: application/mbox
>
> $
> Procedure documented on:
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:mail_and_lists
> notably:
> o Y full mbox archive publicly available; procedure:
>   add:
>   PUBLIC_MBOX = Yes
>   to file:
>   /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py
>   restart mailman
>   for existing lists, toggling archive from public to private and  
> back again seems sufficient to then create the needed link
>
> Also making it available via public rsync is on the todo list, but
> not towards the higher/highest priority bits.
> "Not worse than" migration off of DreamHost.com is higher on the priorities.
> Additional improvements generally come later.